turned the deity exacted from
the chief a promise that he would tell no one of the trail. Then he
rolled a river into the gorge, a mad, raging stream, that should engulf
any that might attempt to enter thereby."

VI

The bill creating the Grand Canyon National Park passed Congress early
in 1919, and was signed by President Wilson on February 26. This closed
an intermittent campaign of thirty-three years, begun by President
Harrison, then senator from Indiana, in January, 1886, to make a
national park of the most stupendous natural spectacle in the world.
Politics, private interests, and the deliberation of governmental
procedure were the causes of delay. A self-evident proposition from the
beginning, it illustrates the enormous difficulties which confront those
who labor to develop our national-parks system. The story is worth the
telling.

Senator Harrison's bill of 1886 met an instant response from the whole
nation. It called for a national park fifty-six miles long and
sixty-nine miles wide. There was opposition from Arizona and the bill
failed. In 1893 the Grand Canyon National Forest was created. In 1898,
depredations and unlawful seizures of land having been reported, the
Secretary of the Interior directed the Land-Office to prepare a new
national-park bill. In 1899 the Land-Office reported that the bill could
not be drawn until the region was surveyed. It took the Geological
Survey five years to make the survey. The bill was not prepared because
meantime it was discovered that the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, now
the Santa Fe, owned rights which first must be eliminated.

Failing to become a national park, President Roosevelt proclaimed the
Grand Canyon a national monument in 1908. In 1909 a bill was introduced
entitling Ralph H. Cameron to build a scenic railway along the canyon
rim, which created much adverse criticism and failed. In 1910 the
American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society proposed a bill to
create the Grand Canyon a national park of large size. The Geological
Survey, to which it was referred, recommended a much smaller area. By
the direction of President Taft, Senator Flint introduced a
national-park bill which differed from both suggestions. The opposition
of grazing interests threw it into the hands of conferees. In 1911
Senator Flint introduced the conferees' bill, but it was opposed by
private interests and failed.

Meantime the country became aroused. Patriotic societies petit